Indonesian retail marketers in ‘survival mode’ as AI reshapes ads, marketing

AI is seen as a key tool to improve media planning and creative production efficiency.

Retail marketers in Indonesia are being urged to rethink their strategies as artificial intelligence (AI) changes advertising, targeting and content production, amidst rapid growth in the country’s digital economy.

Speaking at the Retail Asia Summit Indonesia 2026, Koma Okubo, a partner at YCP, said the country’s retail sector is projected to reach around $50b, with “60% of the retailers expected to be omnichannel by 2027.

He also highlighted the strength of Indonesia’s digital consumer base, noting that over 88% of the consumers purchasing online are actually under 35.

Despite this growth, Okubo said many marketers remain stuck in what he described as “survival mode.”

He said there are three issues, namely fragmented channels across offline and online with a lack of data, content overload, and issues in targeting.

Okubo added that whilst companies often have customer relationship management (CRM) data, they still struggle to form a complete view of customers across channels. “You do have a CRM, you collect the data,” he said. “But it’s kind of hard to understand who they are sometimes, especially your mix of online and offline.”

Okubo said AI can improve both media planning and creative production in retail marketing.

He said AI enables marketers to “spend smarter” by analysing customer behaviour, media allocation and audience segmentation, whilst also speeding up creative output.

Okubo said many companies prioritise short-term performance campaigns due to internal pressure to deliver results.

“Most of the companies actually care about the conversion-led performance type of campaign,” he said.

However, he warned against over-reliance on existing customers. He said brands should also invest in awareness-building to identify future demand.

Okubo said marketing decisions have traditionally relied on instinct, but AI is changing that approach.

He added that AI can help identify seasonal demand patterns, improve attribution and analyse emerging platforms such as TikTok.
“TikTok is one of the most emerging platforms which we can’t avoid,” Okubo said.

Okubo cited a case study in which AI-driven targeting significantly improved advertising efficiency.

Whilst standard YouTube targeting delivered an on-target rate of about 5%, AI-based targeting increased this to 96%.

Additionally, he said that AI can analyse video content elements such as logos, objects, dialogue and appearances to improve targeting accuracy.

Okubo said even with better targeting tools, execution context remains critical.